After all, the way that Andrea Stella took to the team principal role at McLaren like a duck to water – helping steer one of the most impressive F1 comebacks in living memory – showed all that’s possible with the right engineering-led focus at the top.
Komatsu, who has until recently been Haas’s director of engineering, steps up to the top job after a lengthy career in the garage and on the pit wall for BAR, Lotus/Renault and his current employer, which he joined from the off in 2016.
The messaging from Haas’s statement outlining the team boss’s move on Wednesday clearly focused on Komatsu’s engineering background as being a key direction change for the squad.
As team boss Gene Haas was quoted as saying: “In appointing Ayao Komatsu as team principal, we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.”
The thought process of team owner Haas is clear, that in F1’s cost cap era and, with the current generation of complicated ground-effect cars, getting more out of what the team has already got is key to moving things forward.
It is understood that this was an element that he and Steiner did not see eye to eye on, but others within the organisation, including Komatsu himself, did.
While Steiner felt that more investment was needed to move the squad forward, Haas felt the team already had everything it needed to deliver – it just needed someone to pull it all together.
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Gene Haas, Owner and Founder, Haas F1, Guenther Steiner, Team Principal, Haas F1
As Haas said: “We need to be efficient with the resources we have but improving our design and engineering capability is key to our success as a team.
“I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximize our potential – this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”
From Haas’s perspective, there are clear benefits to having an engineer at the top – and it’s a conclusion that other teams have also come to in recent years with a move away from the kind of corporate executive bosses who were the mainstay of F1 for decades.
As well as Stella at McLaren, just in the past 12 months we have had Williams opt for strategy mastermind James Vowles, Alpine go for engine chief Bruno Famin and Red Bull pick Laurent Mekies to help lead the soon-to-be-rebranded AlphaTauri squad.
Nowadays, team principals are not coming from the…
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